Glyptoteque Morbide
by singedbylife
Summary: Post series. Spike and Angel have been working together for years, but one day Spike disappears.


Title: Glyptoteque Morbide

Author: singedbylife

Pairing: Spike/Angel

Rating: NC-17

Warnings: implied non-con, angst, torture, language, character death

Genre: Tragedy

Disclaimer: The characters belong solely to Joss Whedon et co.

Status: Complete

Glyptoteque Morbide

_Oh God. Oh, no_

Angel fell to his knees, the cold marble floor jarring his knees although he didn't truly register the pain shooting up his joints.

In front of him was a centerpiece placed on an ornate, square marble pedestal cut out like a shortened, Ionic column. Placed on the pedestal, was a rectangular glass cube, measuring about 20 inches on each side and being approximately 55 inches in height. The glass was thick, no doubt hardened in some way to make it unbreakable from either side of the glass. Inside the glass cuboid was a male body.

Angel licked his lips, and got back up again, and stumbled towards the showcase, stopping in front of it, sweating and shaking. He felt like throwing up.

The heavy marble pedestal elevated the small figure inside the glass box so that the head was almost level with Angel's own.

The room he was in was empty save for the lone, exhibited figure. The room itself was small, but the ceilings were high and decorated in a 1500 Venetian renaissance style with polished grey marble floors and dark, red-painted walls adorned with friezes along the top walls. In each corner stood a black and pink colored polished marble pillar, seemingly supporting the upward curved ceiling. It was night outside and the narrow row of windows just below the ceiling in the back of the room gave no discernible light. In fact, the room would have been pitch black, were it not for three spots suspended from high above, all pointing down towards the displayed solitary showcase. Their beams encased the case and its contents in an almost ethereal light, creating a golden glow on and around the figure's white hair, his angled face and pale, naked body. The darker shadows under the eye brows, the long eyelashes, the aristocratic nose, the pointy chin, and the chiseled cheek bones contrasted eerily, beautifully with the illuminated areas. The figure looked sculpted, and – for lack of a better word – angelic. But what he really was, was abused and maimed and Angel's gut twisted.

The box was too narrow for him to lie down and so he did the only thing he could, which was to lean slightly sideways against one of the cold glass corners, trying to get some semblance of rest that way.

His limbs had never understood what had happened to him, and they were constantly itching and throbbing, despite the lack of open wounds or the lack of, well, them. He tried desperately not to think about it, not to feel, not remember the sight of the scalpel and the bone saw. The feeling of flesh being cut into and the sound of his femur bone being sawed through, first one, then the other. He'd thrashed and bucked and screamed soundlessly before passing out. When he'd awoken, he'd been turned into a prop from a horror movie. He tried to will away thoughts like this, thoughts of any kind. Tried to stay as still as possible, knowing that his handlers didn't like it if he squirmed too much inside his glass prison. He'd been made a piece of art and he was to behave as such or they would make sure that his sorry existence would become even worse.

He wondered if there were others like him in this hell house, but he thought not. He would have sensed them or perhaps even heard them during some of his feeding and grooming times. The holy water which was every so often being dripped carefully into his ear canals usually rendered him fully deaf, but sometimes, he could hear a little after a while, if the handler had been careless with his job. He was treated with holy water in his ears every other week and fed daily and those few times during feeding, when he'd realized that he was able to hear faint muffled sounds, he'd only been able to hear parts of the handlers' mumbled conversations, not really understanding anything. But some sound was better than none at all. There were no sounds from other prisoners that he could tell of, but then again, not being able to scream was not unusual, so who knew? He thought his handlers were human. They felt human, when they lifted him or did… other things, but some of them didn't smell quite right.

His eyes were completely useless. They hadn't been removed, but they might as well have been cut out of his sockets, as they, too, were treated with holy water on a regular basis and more often than his ears. He thought that he would have preferred it, had the bloody things been torn out of his skull once and for all because the weekly treatment was a living hell. He shuddered at the unbidden memories, but was unable to prevent them from running through his mind. He would be hauled out of his box and held down by hard, unrelenting hands. Then he'd be lifted and placed on a cold metal table. His head would be locked into a metal device and his stomach, upper thighs and shoulders would be strapped firmly down by what felt like more hands pushing him to the table and tightening the leather straps. The handlers weren't taking any chances despite the fact that he was completely unable to defend himself. His fangs were long gone, too. He was as much a threat as the marble figures he now portrayed. The handlers would force his eyes open with metal speculums and holy water would be carefully applied to his irises with small strokes from a brush, coating his pupils with a thin layer of what was, to him, essentially acid. The stench as the eyes popped and sizzled was horrid, but the pain was worse. They had been experimenting with this procedure for a long, long time, before finding the right way to render him blind, but pretty. After all, he was to resemble a Greek sculpture, not a torture victim, never mind the fact that, of course, that was exactly what he was.

After coating his eyes, they would leave them open to dry and in the meantime force a metal funnel down his throat. They kept his mouth fully open with a metal gag and inserted the funnel until he gagged and retched before they proceeded with their cruel ministrations, carefully coating his vocal cords as well. By then his eyes would be tearing up, but apparently the few seconds of making sure the holy water dried on the surface was enough to do the damage they needed. Sculptures were meant to look beautiful, but they were not meant to interact with the audience and therefore he had to be blind and quiet and senseless for them. He had to act as if he was oblivious to the world around him and though he never was, the loss of his senses caused him nearly as much misery as losing his limbs had done.

His throat would burn and blister and as a consequence, he couldn't swallow. They'd feed him by forcing another tube all the way down into his stomach via the already inserted funnel and pump blood directly into his belly. They fed him very little and used only fish blood. It kept his torso fit looking, but the fish blood had piss poor healing potentials, and therefore his enforced injuries took much longer to heal and disappear, which of course was the point. They didn't want to have to haul him out for coating every day after all.

Most of the handlers would stick to the routines. Pull him out, feed him, put him back. Or pull him out, smear his eyes, throat, and ears, and feed him. Then wash his body and his hair, occasionally cutting and bleaching it as well, before returning him to his glass prison.

Others… Others did more than that, and when that happened, all he could do was lie on the cold table or half standing in the shower booth or simply shoved down onto the floor on his stomach and take the assaults wordlessly.

Oh, God, if only he could fall asleep and stop thinking. Stop feeling. Stop being. He wanted to… He needed to die. _Please God, somebody dust me! Please!_

Angel swallowed thickly before moving closer to the display.

Spike's hair was curly, short, and bleached. He was thin, but not starving. Somebody was making sure to keep him fed and clean, all the while still having done this to him and putting him back into this fucking showcase every day. The cruelty was beyond his current imagination, and Angel felt his initial horror subside to become replaced by an immense fury and sorrow. He grasped the box' corners, trying to shake it loose or lift it off the pedestal, but it didn't budge and there were no visual openings. He pressed his forehead hard against the cool glass surface, swearing in frustration. Standing like this, he could see Spike's long cock nestled against his left thigh, and his golden pubic hairs, which were as neatly trimmed as the hairs on his head and that incensed him even more. They were treating his best friend like he was a thing. Spike's legs – oh, his legs! - were spread out as far as the showcase would allow them. Probably the only way for Spike to reach some kind of relaxed position. What was left of his arms, hung down on either side of him, perfecting the image of a flawless, Greek sculpture. Spike's immaculate torso didn't actually move, but Angel thought he could see the chest begin to expand slightly. Could Spike sense that Angel was right there? Had he perhaps heard his voice? To Angel's horror, Spike swallowed and his chest visibly began moving as if he was panting or in distress, and Angel stared in terror as Spike's sightless, milky white eyes opened and roamed blindly about for a few seconds. Spike was clearly upset, but he didn't move apart from breathing faster and, probably out of pure reflex, turning his eyes about. He suffered silently inside his see-through cage right in front of Angel, just a tiny, lonely, figure, and it was unbearable to watch, and Angel roared in frustration.

"Spike," Angel said as close to Spike's ear as he could come. There was no outward reaction. Angel knocked on the glass with his knuckles and this motion brought a slight frown to Spike's forehead, and perhaps a tiny flinch, but Angel couldn't be sure about that. Other than that, Spike didn't seem to react. His chest kept moving rapidly up and down though, so he had to be aware that something was tside his confinement.

"I'm going to find something to get you out of this fucking box and then I…"

Angel stopped. He really didn't know what he would do once he'd gotten Spike out. He looked at the frail, ruined body for long seconds before having to look away. Spike would never want to live like this. Unable to fight, unable to reach out and touch things. In fact, unable to do much of anything. No, Angel knew perfectly well what he would have to do once he'd gotten Spike out. And it was breaking his heart. He cared for Spike, hell he even liked him. More and more during those years, they'd been living together in the Hyperion in a partnership mostly evolving around demon hunting on the surface, but perhaps something more than that deep down. They'd never addressed the reason why they stayed together, both of them refusing to let their barriers down, and both of them probably thinking like the idiots they were, that they had all the time in the world. But Angel knew now, staring at Spike's inert body, that he loved the little fool and had loved him for a long time, even though Spike would most likely laugh at the notion.

Angel had searched and searched ever since Spike had vanished from the surface of the earth more than a year ago. Angel knew that something had happened to him as soon as he didn't return as usual to the Hyperion. Sure, neither of them were in the habit of confiding in each other and sure, they fought all the time, but he also knew that they could depend on one another one hundred percent. A nd there was just no way in hell, that Spike would have taken off without telling Angel about it beforehand.

He'd contacted Giles to ask for the Council's help, but there were no magical ways of locating vampires and Angel could tell that Giles was loathe to help either one of them. So he'd gone to Rome to see if he could get Buffy to come back with him and help him find Spike. He had arrived in Rome on a warm spring evening. Ever since Spike's and his own short visit to the capital nearly eight years ago, Buffy had been living in Rome. She was no longer dating the Immortal, which was something at least, but she had married an Italian named Raffaele. Raffaele's complexion was nowhere near Spike's, Angel noted with some satisfaction staring at their wedding portrait. Naturally, Buffy had been taken aback by his unannounced appearance at her front door, but only for a few seconds. Then she'd embraced him hotly and kissed him on his cheeks, Italian style. He'd been invited in and seen her daughter and they had sat down and had a good long talk, during which he'd told her about Spike.

She had of course been shocked and then very, very angry. But then Raffaele had come home and he'd smiled at Angel and kissed Buffy, and picked up their little cutie of a girl, and Buffy had visibly melted looking at her perfectly normal, handsome, and kind husband and mentally moved on right before Angel's eyes. Again, they sat down, and she told Angel how she loved Spike, and how she loved him, but as friends. She wished she could help Angel find Spike, but she didn't even know where to begin and she had a family now. He'd told her not to worry. That he would keep on searching and let her know if he found out something. "You know him, he's fallen head over heels in love with a new girl, I'm sure," he jokingly told her upon parting.

That had been a long time ago. Too long. But at long last, more than a year after Spike's disappearance, a tip from an old demon acquaintance up north alerted him to the Rashlnik Demon ambassador's rare private collection of art and curiosities in the outskirts of Vancouver.

The ambassador had built what he referred to as a Glyptoteque Morbide. From the outside it looked nothing special, but inside, the interior could easily match some of the world's most beautiful museums in décor, if not in actual size. The ambassador's collection ranged from mummies to paintings of slaughtered animals, bloody war scenes and cemeteries. There was one room with daguerreotype portraits from the Victorian Era and another room, slightly large, exhibited taxidermic animals, as well as demons and even a poorly preserved, deformed woman from the late 1800s.

Someone had mentioned something about a new acquisition of the ambassador's, a so-called animated torso in a box. And the rumored description fit all too well with Spike.

Horrified, Angel had jumped on board the first redeye to Vancouver, rented a car and driven straight to the location of the Glyptoteque. After joining forces with Spike, he wasn't exactly new to modern B&E and it had been fairly easy getting inside the building. A Rashlnik guard had been sitting in a small office watching porn on his iPad, and Angel had swiftly broken his neck, not even feeling the slightest twinge of guilt from doing so. But it was all much too late.

Angel clutched the glass box more severely. Spike was shaking all over now, and Angel repeated his words more loudly. "I will get you out!" There was an iron door behind the showcase and one of those electronic locks that you swiped a keycard through. He ran over to the door anyway trying to yank it open using brute force, but of course it was locked and he couldn't move it or kick it open, either. He rushed back to the dead guard, looking for a keycard. He found it in the top drawer marked "VmpBsmnt," written with a black sharpie pen. Well, at least that had been easy. He grabbed the card, and ran back to the display room. He swiped the card through the door's electronic lock, and heaved a sigh of relief when the door immediately clicked open. He entered and descended the stairs to the sublevel. A metal table with straps and a metal head restraint sat in the middle of the room with surgical lamps placed above it. Next to it was a table with a wide array of medical tools, all of them terrifying and painful to look at. A freezer and a fridge with a glass front showed that lots of blood packages were stocked and ready. In the corner of the room right next to where he was standing was an open shower stall, this one with a mounted metal rack in it. They could stick Spike's thighs into the rack and secure his upper body to the back of the metal to keep him upright as they rinsed him. The rack could be turned so that the handler would only have to push Spike as he rinsed him. Angel thought he detected a faint trace of sex from the stall. Fuck. He quickly looked back at what he'd come down here for. As he had guessed, there was what resembled an elevator shaft built in below the spot where Spike was displayed up on the first floor. The shaft consisted of the same kind of hardened glass as above the room, was in fact that very same glass only continued below ground. The difference was that on this level, there was a build in door on the bottom of the shaft. What appeared to be a cuboid on the first floor, was part of the elevator shaft. A thick scissor lift construction carried the floor of Spike's confinement box and Angel pushed the down button on the elevator, and the scissor lift began to fold, and the floor to lower. Slowly, Spike's body became visible, his body now arched forward so that the only part of him that was touching the glass as he was sliding down, was his hair, which didn't obstruct the motion.

As soon as he was down, Angel yanked open the door and gently lifted Spike out of his confinement. For a moment he held him in front of him in stretched arms with Spike lying on his back like an offering to the gods, but clearly the gods cared fuck all about Spike. Angel gathered Spike's body close to his own, hugging him hard and sobbing. Spike stirred and Angel could hear him take a deep breath, could feel him tense in his arms and whisper "Angel?"

"God, yes, Spike. Yes, it's me. Oh, god, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." Angel collapsed on the floor, clutching Spike firmly against his chest making sure he wasn't hurt in the drop. He hugged him closer, kissing Spike's hair and his forehead and his ear, while rocking him to and fro. "It's me, I've got you. I've got you now. Oh, God."

Spike felt Angel's strong arms around him, could smell his unique scent and faintly hear his sobbing. He burrowed his face into the soft fabric of Angel's clothes and felt Angel's lips all over his head. He'd finally been found. He'd been found by Angel, who'd been looking for him through all this time and who had missed him and who loved him. He knew that now. Spike wanted to cry as well, but he couldn't. He could only feel relief that now it was finally over. No more hands or cold tables, no more holy water, no more hours of trying to stand on maimed, and throbbing thighs, no more being kept in the dark and hurting. No more rapes. Peace awaited him. "Kill me," he whispered. "Please Angel, Love, kill me?"

He felt Angel's soft lips descend on his own and Angel's big hand cradle the back of his head, his fingers slowly rubbing soothing circles in Spike's hair, combing it. He felt Angel's tongue gently licking his lips, slowly gaining entrance to his mouth and it was so sweet and felt so wonderful that he sobbed into Angel's mouth, and then he felt no more...

bThe Sorry End./b/lj-cut

As always, I would love to read your comments.


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